Rosales v. Dretke

United States Court of Appeals
Fifth Circuit
F I L E D
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
April 3, 2006
For the Fifth Circuit
___________________________
Charles R. Fulbruge III
Clerk
No. 04-70046
___________________________

MARIANO JUAREZ ROSALES,
Petitioner - Appellant,

VERSUS

DOUG DRETKE, Director,
Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Correctional Institutions Division,
Respondent - Appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Southern District of Texas

Before DAVIS, SMITH and DENNIS, Circuit Judges.

W. EUGENE DAVIS, Circuit Judge:

Petitioner Mariano Rosales appeals the district court’s denial of his petition for writ of habeas

corpus. Because we conclude that the procedural default applied by the Texas Court of Criminal

Appeals to bar review of Rosales’ Batson1 claim was not “firmly established and regularly followed”

by that court, we vacate the district court’s dismissal of Rosales’ writ application and remand for

further proceedings.

I.

A.

The Court of Criminal Appeals summarized the relevant facts of the crime in its opinion on

direct appeal:

1
Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986).
 The evidence at guilt/innocence shows that appellant was a forty-six year old
businessman in Houston. He and his wife of twenty-seven years, Mary Rosales, had
six children. In 1984 appellant and his wife began to experience marital difficulties,
and in January of 1985, Mary began seeing a twenty-four year old man, Hector
Balboa. In February, Mary moved into a trailer she and appellant owned. She began
spending some nights with Hector at the home where he lived with his mother and
two sisters. In early March Mary sought a divorce. She still saw appellant on a daily
basis, however, and conjugal relations between them continued. At one point
appellant asked Mary if she was seeing Hector, with whom he was acquainted, and
she admitted that she was.

On Friday, March 29, 1985, Mary agreed to seek marriage counseling with appellant.
She had plans to meet Hector that evening, but appellant asked her not to stay out
long because he wanted to meet with her later. Mary agreed in order to placate
appellant, but ultimately spent the night at Hector's house. Appellant went out that
night with a friend, T. J. Tristan, and drank more than "six or eight beers" and part of
"a fifth of liquor." He was last seen by Tristan at about 3:00 a.m. on the morning of
Saturday, March 30, 1985.

At about 7:00 a.m. appellant telephoned Hector's brother in an effort to find out
where Hector lived. He spoke to Hector's niece, who was able to provide him the
unlisted telephone number but not the address. He hung up before the girl could bring
her father to the phone. Appellant next called Hector's home and spoke to his sister,
Patricia Balboa. He told Patricia he was a friend of Hector's who wanted to come visit
him sometime, and asked her for directions to the house. She complied. Fifteen
minutes later appellant walked into the house with a pistol in his hand. Without a
word he walked up to Pete Rodriguez, Patricia's boyfriend, who was watching
television on a sofa, and shot him at point blank range in the head, killing him. He then
shot Patricia in the chest, crossed the room, and shot her again in the back. Appellant
next proceeded to the front bedroom, where fifteen year old Rachel Balboa was
asleep. He shot her twice, mortally.2 He then went to Hector's room and fired
through the door, striking Hector twice. Appellant kicked the door open and a
struggle ensued, during which both Hector and appellant were shot. Hector fled
outside, followed by appellant, who continued to point the pistol at Hector and pull
the trigger, though the gun was out of rounds. Appellant then got in his truck and
drove away. Hector and Patricia survived.

Rosales v. State, 841 S.W.2d 368, 381 (Tex. Crim. App. 1992).

B.

2
Both Patricia and Rachel were pregnant, and engaged to be married.

2
 Rosales was convicted and sentenced to death in November 1985 for the capital murder of

Rachel Balboa committed during a burglary. On direct appeal, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

affirmed the conviction and sentence. Rosales v. State, 748 S.W.2d 451 (Tex. Crim. App. 1987).

In response to Rosales’ state application for habeas relief alleging that appellate counsel violated his

constitutional right to effective legal assistance, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted Rosales

a new appeal. Ex parte Rosales, 769 S.W.2d 248 (Tex. Crim. App. 1989). In this second appeal,

Rosales raised among other issues that the trial court erred by not requiring the state to explain its

peremptory challenges of Hispanic veniremen. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals held that the

claim as presented appeared to be premised on the Sixth Amendment, which had been rejected by the

Supreme Court in Holland v. Illinois, 493 U.S. 474 (1990), as a basis for a Batson claim. The court

also held that to the extent Rosales raised an Equal Protection complaint under Batson, his trial

objection was inadequate to preserve the claim for appellate review.3 The Texas Court of Criminal

Appeals thus affirmed Rosales’ conviction and sentence. Rosales v. State, 841 S.W.2d 368 (Tex.

Crim. App. 1992). The Supreme Court denied Rosales’ petition for writ of certiorari, Rosales v.

Texas, 510 U.S. 949 (1993).

In October 1996, Rosales filed a state application for writ of habeas corpus. Among other

issues, Rosales complained that the trial court’s failure to have the State specify the reasons for its

3
The court also noted that assuming that Rosales’ objection was adequate to preserve the
equal protection complaint for review, Rosales had received all the relief he requested. In Rosales’
first objection, he asked that the state be required to explain future peremptory challenges. Rosales’
complaint on appeal was directed towards Hispanic panel members only and the court stated that no
further Hispanics were challenged by the state.

3
peremptory strikes denied him a fair trial.4 The state habeas court noted that on direct appeal the

Texas Court of Criminal Appeals had concluded that Rosales failed to preserve his complaint for

review. It concluded that because Rosales failed to preserve the error, he was barred from advancing

this claim and denied relief. The Court of Criminal Appeals adopted the trial court’s findings and

based on that record and its own review, denied relief. Ex Parte Mariano Juarez Rosales, Application

No. 16,180-03 (Tex. Crim. App. Sept. 25, 2002)(unpublished opinion).

Rosales filed his federal habeas petition in March 2003, raising four claims for relief. In

September 2004, the district court granted the Director’s motion for summary judgment, denied

Rosales’ request for discovery, habeas relief and a certificate of appealability (“COA”). The district

court concluded that state procedural law barred consideration of his Batson claim. Rosales timely

appealed. We concluded that reasonable jurists could disagree over whether the procedural bar

should apply to Rosales’ Batson claim and granted COA on that issue. COA was denied on Rosales’

other claims. Rosales v. Dretke, 133 Fed. Appx. 135; 2005 U.S. App. LEXIS 10268. Thus we are

now faced with the question whether the district court was correct to honor the procedural bar

applied by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

C.

The following facts are relevant to jury selection and objections by Rosales. On the first day

of jury selection, the parties questioned seven potential jurors. The prosecution used peremptory

challenges to remove three jurors: Ms. Lopez, Ms. Taylor, and Mr. Trevino. The next morning trial

counsel objected to the prosecution’s peremptory strikes:

4
Rosales’ complaint on habeas addressed the use of peremptory strikes against all minorities,
not just Hispanics as the issue was raised on direct appeal.

4
 Trial counsel: Your Honor, the other matter I would like to take up with the Court
is the familiar patterns already developing, Your Honor, on the
selection of these jurors, and the State has exercised strikes on two
Mexican Americans and one black woman, and I feel that this
defendant has federal and a state constitutional right to a cross section
of his peers, and if the State is going to persist in using their
peremptories to eliminate all minorities, both Mexican Americans and
Chicanos and the black people, this defendant is going to be denied his
right to a fair trial by his peers. My proposal is this - we know the
State has a right to peremptor[y] challenges. I think the Court may
not favor their striking minorities without reason. I think if in the
future the States strikes what is obviously a minority juror, that they
state in the record their particular reasons for exercising that
peremptory challenge, and I so propose it and request it and move the
Court to so follow that procedure.

Trial court: I will deny your request to have them specify the reason for the
exercise of peremptory challenges.

Trial counsel: May I have a running objection to that?

Trial court: Yes sir.

Trial counsel: May I have in the record, Your Honor, after each juror is selected,
that I - and leaves the room, that we state in the record what the race
of that juror is, and if there is any problem about it, then we can
straighten it out then, if there is any issue of fact as to what color or
race that particular juror is, but I would like to have that in the record
specifically on the peremptory challenges the State exercises in the
future.

Trial court: Very well. As I recall, obviously, Ms. Lopez, juror number one, and
Mr. Trevino, number six, were both Mexican. Ms. Taylor was a black
female.

On subsequent days, the prosecution struck Mr. Hamilton (a black male), Mr. Deen (an East Indian

male), Ms. Walker (a black female), and Mr. Saenz (presumed Hispanic male). Even though defense

so requested, the trial court did not require the prosecutor to justify its use of peremptory challenges.

Of those minority potential jurors struck after the first day of jury selection, Rosales re-raised his

5
objection only as to the dismissal of Mr. Hamilton, who was black:

Trial counsel: Your Honor, that appears just blatantly a racial strike, Your Honor,
and I respectfully ask the State to justify using a strike on that juror.
I think it’s discriminatory. It violates this defendant’s right to a jury
of his peers and a cross section of the community, and if the Court
would check over this information sheet, this juror is qualified from
the State’s point of view as any juror I have ever seen and they use a
strike on him, and I move the Court to have the State justify this
strike.

The district court again denied the request.

II.

Federal court review of a question of federal law decided by a state court is generally

unavailable if the state court resolved the question on a “state law ground that is independent of the

federal question and adequate to support the judgment.” Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722, 729

(1991). This rule is grounded in concerns of comity and federalism. It is designed to prevent federal

courts from deciding cases on federal constitutional grounds regarding a petitioner’s confinement that

would be advisory because the confinement can be upheld on an independent and adequate state law

basis. Id. at 730. When, as in this case, the independent and adequate state law ground is a state

procedural default rule, another concern applies. A “habeas petitioner who has failed to meet the

State’s procedural requirements for presenting his federal claims has deprived the state courts of an

opportunity to address those claims in the first instance.” Id. The procedural default rule also

prevents habeas petitioners from avoiding the exhaustion requirement by defaulting their federal

claims in state court. Id.

To be “adequate” to support the judgment, the state law ground must be both “firmly

established and regularly followed.” Ford v. Georgia, 498 U.S. 411, 424 (1991). If the state law

6
ground is not firmly established and regularly followed, there is no bar to federal review and a federal

habeas court may go to the merits of the claim. Barr v. Columbia, 378 U.S. 146, 149 (1964). An

important consideration in determining whether an “adequate” state law ground exists is the

application of the state law ground to identical or similar claims. Amos v. Scott, 61 F.3d 333, 340-41

(5th Cir. 1995). The adequacy of a state law ground to preclude federal court review of federal

constitutional claims is a federal question which is reviewed by this court de novo. Howlett v. Rose,

496 U.S. 356, 366 (1990).

Rosales was tried in 1985. The Supreme Court’s decision in Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S.

79 (1986), which is central to a decision in this case, was decided in 1986. Rosales’ case on direct

appeal was decided by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in 1992. A brief history of pre- and post-

Batson jurisprudence is helpful in understanding this case.

Batson’s antecedent, Swain v. Alabama, 380 U.S. 202 (1965), recognized that an equal

protection violation occurs when the State systematically uses its peremptory challenges for the

purpose of excluding members of a black defendant’s race from his petit jury. Id. at 209. To prove

a violation under Swain required proof that the prosecutor “in case after case, whatever the

circumstances, whatever the crime and whoever the defendant or the victim . . . [,was] responsible

for the removal of Negroes who had been selected as qualified jurors by the jury commissioners and

who had survived challenges for cause, with the result that no Negroes ever serve on petit juries.”

Id. at 223-24. “Batson dropped the Swain requirement of proof of prior discrimination, holding it

possible for a defendant to make out a prima facie equal protection violation entirely by reference to

the prosecution’s use of peremptory challenges in the circumstances of the defendant’s own case.”

Ford, 498 U.S. at 420. The Batson decision was applied retroactively for cases, like Rosales’,

7
pending on direct review or not yet final when Batson was decided. Griffith v. Kentucky, 479 U.S.

314 (1987). Thus, courts for some period after Batson were faced with the challenge of determining

what sorts of objections were adequate to preserve Batson error in pre-Batson trials.

We have examined a number of decisions rendered by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

in cases where the defendants were in the same position as Rosales: their trials occurred before

Batson was announced but their direct appeals were decided after Batson. In these cases, the Texas

Court of Criminal Appeals responded to the change in the law wrought by Batson by allowing with

some leniency objections that did not meet the strict test of Swain and inartfully presented claims

under the theories yet to be recognized in Batson and its progeny.

In Henry v. State, 729 S.W.2d 732 (Tex. Crim. App. 1987), the defendant after voir dire

made a motion pointing out that he was black, that there were seven black persons in the array and

requesting the court to instruct the district attorney not to use his peremptory strikes to eliminate the

black prospective jurors. The state struck all the black prospective jurors. After the jury was sworn,

the defendant objected to the use of the strikes against all the black jurors and requested a new jury

that would present a “fair representation of this community” so the defendant could “get a fair trial

by the jurors of its peers.” Id. at 735. The Texas court found that these objections “sufficiently

raised the issue of the State’s use of its peremptory strikes at trial to invoke Batson protections on

appeal.” Id. at 736.

In DeBlanc v. State, 732 S.W.2d 640 (Tex. Crim. App. 1987), after the jury array had been

seated, the defendant challenged the array based on the under-representation of blacks on the array.

The defendant argued that this under-representation increased the likelihood that he would be denied

his Sixth Amendment right to a “fair cross-section of the community on the jury panel.” The

8
objection was overruled. The defendant noted his exception to the state’s cause challenges against

several black prospective jurors and noted for the record that several jurors struck by the state were

black without raising an exception. The Texas court concluded

Clearly appellant did not voice a clear objection to the use of the peremptory strikes
by the prosecutor. However, by virtue of his motion to challenge the array and his
efforts to point out that the prosecutor was using his peremptories on blacks, it is
clear from the record that appellant was concerned with the exclusion of blacks from
the jury and did present his concerns to the trial judge. Although we caution defense
attorneys that such efforts would be inadequate in cases tried after Batson, we are
compelled by fairness to hold that appellant has properly preserved the issue.

Id. at 642.

In Chambers v. State, 742 S.W.2d 695 (Tex. Crim. App. 1988), the Texas court stated only

that the defendant claims that “he was denied a fair trial under the Fourteenth Amendment due to the

prosecutor’s use of peremptory challenges to strike all of the blacks from the jury panel.” There is

no description of the defendant’s objection at trial. The case was remanded for consideration of

Chambers’ Batson challenge.

In deciding Rosales’ Batson challenge, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals applied a more

exacting standard for the objection necessary to preserve a Batson claim than it did in Henry, DeBlanc

and Chambers. In Rosales’ case, the court citing Trevino v. Texas, 469 U.S. 1222 (1992), noted that

the Supreme Court held

that federal judicial review of a Batson claim is not barred by state procedural default
rules bearing on the specificity of objections at trial so long as the accused either
invoked Batson’s Fourteenth Amendment antecedent, Swain v. Alabama, 380 U.S.
202, 85 S.Ct. 824, 13 L.Ed. 2d 759 (1965), or in any event referred to a practice of
using peremptory challenges to exclude minority members from jury service “over a
long period of time,” or “historically and habitually.” Here appellant came no closer
to invoking Swain than to remark preliminarily that “familiar patterns [were] already
developing.”

9
3841 S.W.2d at 380. Thus, the objection the Texas court required to prove a Batson claim in

Rosales’ case is much stricter than it required in the decisions discussed above.

Even Trevino v. Texas, 503 U.S. 562 (1992), reversing 815 S.W.2d 592 (Tex. Crim. App.

1991), a case relied upon by the State, supports our conclusion that the application of the procedural

bar to Rosales’ case is not proper. Trevino was tried in 1984, pre-Batson. The Texas Court of

Criminal Appeals affirmed Trevino’s conviction, characterizing his objections to the jury selection

process as arising under the Sixth Amendment. Under Holland v. Illinois, 493 U.S. 474 (1990), the

Sixth Amendment does not prohibit the prosecution from exercising its peremptory challenges to

exclude potential jurors based on race. The United States Supreme Court looked at both his trial

court objection and that raised on appeal to determine that he had adequately preserved a Batson

claim similar to those raised in Batson and Ford. At trial, Trevino raised the following objection:

The prosecution . . . historically and habitually uses its peremptory challenges to strike black
people and other minorities who are otherwise qualified. . . . This practice deprives the
Accused of a jury representing a fair cross-section of the community in violation of the Sixth
Amendment to the United States Constitution.

On appeal Trevino argued that the “prosecution’s race based use of challenges violated his ‘rights

to due process of law and to an impartial jury fairly drawn from a representative cross section of the

community’” founded on the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments. Trevino acknowledged that his

claim would not satisfy Swain, but noted that Batson was awaiting review. Trevino’s objections were

somewhat more precise than those of Rosales but still do not meet the specificity of the rule applied

by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to Rosales’ writ application.

In fact, except for Trevino which was reversed by the Supreme Court, the state cites no Texas

case with a pre-Batson trial in which the defendant made an objection like that made by Rosales that

10
the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected as inadequate or procedurally barred. The cases relied

on by the State as establishing that the Texas contemporaneous objection rule was strictly and

regularly applied to this issue involved situations in which the defendants failed to make any objection

or create any record regarding peremptory strikes of minority members of the venire. Williams v.

State, 773 S.W.2d 525 (Tex. Crim. App. 1988); Matthews v. State, 768 S.W.2d 731 (Tex. Crim.

App. 1989).

The principal substantive argument the state made during oral argument was that the Texas

Court of Criminal Appeals in Henry, DeBlanc, and Chambers erred in applying such a relaxed

standard to preserve a Batson objection and that Rosales should not receive a windfall on account

of this error. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals is entitled to exercise whatever leniency or grace

it wishes in establishing its procedural rules. Our task is to determine whether procedural rules

applied by the state court to bar merits review of a habeas claim have been strictly and regularly

applied. If the state procedural rule has not been strictly and regularly applied, we must review the

merits of the petitioner’s constitutional claims.

III.

In summary, the procedural bar applied by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and honored

by the district court was not adequate to support the judgment and preclude federal court review of

Rosales’ constitutional claim. The procedural bar was not firmly established and regularly followed

by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals for cases like Rosales’, which were on direct appeal when

Batson was decided. For the foregoing reasons, we vacate the district court’s order dismissing

Rosales’ habeas petition and remand this case to the district court for further proceedings and to

consider additional arguments presented by the parties which the district court did not reach.

11
VACATED. REMANDED.

12